DV Scheduler and issues with auto-add exclusions

[Dencorub]

Hi All,

I am using DV Scheduler as my main HTPC DVB recording application. I have been using it for years, but recently have run into issues.

For some odd reason, scheduled recordings are being added to the exclusions list the instant they are due to start recording.

It's not all recordings that do this, though.

I can't find anything in the logs to tell me why the recording failed.

I can't seem to find a way to increase logging.

Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?

Running Windows 11.

Any help is appreciated.

[hydra3333]

Sorry, can't help you with his this apparently long-discontinued (since 2016?) software.

There's what may perhaps be an equivalent (or not) which is still developed and works really really well - TV Scheduler Pro
https://www.videohelp.com/software/DVB-Web-Scheduler (actually TV Scheduler Pro)

TV Scheduler Pro is a state of the art Digital TV application for scheduling recordings of Digital TV and Digital Radio (Terrestrial and Satellite) broadcasts, using one or more DVB tuner devices. TV Scheduler Pro runs as a service on your computer, you interact with TV Scheduler Pro using the fully functional Web interface in your favourite Web Browser. Because TV Scheduler Pro uses the widely accepted HTTP protocol for delivering the Web interface to your browser you can access and control the Scheduler from anywhere on your home network or, if you have Internet access, anywhere in the world. Requires JAVA (installed or standalone in a local folder) !

https://sourceforge.net/projects/tvschedulerpro/
https://sourceforge.net/p/tvschedulerpro/discussion/users/

It's free. Hope that helps.

Cheers

[Dencorub]

There's what may perhaps be an equivalent (or not) which is still developed and works really really well - TV Scheduler Pro

Thanks for that. Do you know if TV Scheduler Pro can record multiple streams using just 1 tuner?

We have 5 broadcasters here in Australia, with each having a number of channels available. For example, we have a broadcaster called Nine. They have channels Nine, Gem, and Go!

DV Scheduler allows me to record all the channels of a broadcaster using only 1 tuner. This means, with my 3 dual tuner cards, I can actually record every single free-to-air channel, and still have 1 tuner left to watch something live.

It's one of the reasons I have stuck with DV Scheduler.

[hydra3333]

Thanks for that. Do you know if TV Scheduler Pro can record multiple streams using just 1 tuner?

I have 2x hauppauge pcie Quad cards in a PC (i.e. 8 tuners) and it happily records all from all 8 tuners simultaneously. The PC is several years old, moderately spec'd (2 core) but with sufficient bus bandwidth (and memory speed) to handle it.
/rant/Having said that I now very very rarely watch any TV, and usually only record the footy for timeshifted viewing; streaming services seem much better with semi-watchable content on demand and I really really hate TV channels' moves to "fake" live content and overly emotive lowest-common-denominator shows ... script writers get actors to portray making decisions which no rational person would make and still show girls (and increasingly boys) tripping over when chased by a baddie who doesn't trip over ... /end rant/

We have 5 broadcasters here in Australia, with each having a number of channels available. For example, we have a broadcaster called Nine. They have channels Nine, Gem, and Go!

I'm in an a ACST timezone so I know (if not love) those channels content.

DV Scheduler allows me to record all the channels of a broadcaster using only 1 tuner. This means, with my 3 dual tuner cards, I can actually record every single free-to-air channel, and still have 1 tuner left to watch something live.

Yes, TVSP calls such a "mux" for each channel, similar applies.
I'm a tad less needy and prefer recording individual programmes vs a mux or two.
IIRC, it is possible that TVSP is a descendent or antecedent or relative of DV Scheduler; then again perhaps not and I may be thinking of the tool associated with the seeming-nearly-defunct DigitalNow website.

It's one of the reasons I have stuck with DV Scheduler.

Agreed, there's nothing which compares to the ease of use ("it just works") of something like TVSP.
I subscribe to the (perfectly legal) "ICE TV" service for AU channel programme data for TVSP to collect nightly, well worth the couple of bikkies a month.
I don't install java runtime, either, so go with downloading the recommended zip and unpacking that into the separate folder ... less versioning hassles in the long run.
The TVSP author is really cool with questions and informative answers and advice in the forum, too.

have 1 tuner left to watch something live.

I have as yet not found a free tool I like for simultaneous watching whilst TVSP does it thing.
Can you please advise what you use for watching and any relevant advice on configuring it ? Ta.

[Dencorub]

Yes, TVSP calls such a "mux" for each channel, similar applies.
I'm a tad less needy and prefer recording individual programmes vs a mux or two.

DV Scheduler can also do the mux thing, but can also spit out individual files for each channel. messing around to get a final result is not somewhere I wanna go ...

I have as yet not found a free tool I like for simultaneous watching whilst TVSP does it thing.
Can you please advise what you use for watching and any relevant advice on configuring it ? Ta.

We use Windows Media Centre. We give it a tuner for it's exclusive use. Quite a bit of messing around to get it working, but once done, it works great.

On occasion it fails to find it's tuner, or tells us it's in use. I wrote a little program that launched VLC and sets to a chosen channel. It reads in the EPG data we get from EPGScan so you can see what's on now, and what is on next. It lets us select a different tuner as well.

[hydra3333]

DV Scheduler can also do the mux thing, but can also spit out individual files for each channel. messing around to get a final result is not somewhere I wanna go ...

Cool, I shuddered when I typed that ... not being sure if TVSP did the split thing.
Ah, it got it the wrong way around the TS Mux is a single stream eg 9Go.

Capture Types
The following file capture types are available.
Full TS	The full transport stream (all pids that are transmitted, just dumps the received stream to disk)
DVR-MS	This is the new DVR capture format from Microsoft
TS mux	A basic Transport stream with just the packets from the video and audio streams you are interested in

Not altogether sure whether "Full TS" style captures are your bestest option ... each to their own ...
per the TVSP main interface (screen grab attached) one can click on a programme and say yes to the prompt to record and these show up with a yellow stripe (with a configurable recording overlap time) as pending, just record only the things you want to watch later (in their native broadcast format eg h.264/aac in a .TS container) saving disk space and other PC resources ...

[Dencorub]

Cool, I shuddered when I typed that ... not being sure if TVSP did the split thing.
Ah, it got it the wrong way around the TS Mux is a single stream eg 9Go.

This is a basic requirement of any recording package. DV Scheduler does this, but the feature I like is that it can record 9Go and GEM, but only use 1 tuner. I had looked at several other options, and they didn't do this.

Not altogether sure whether "Full TS" style captures are your bestest option ... each to their own ...

If it can't do the above, this is an alternative, but far to much messing about to get the streams out.

per the TVSP main interface (screen grab attached) one can click on a programme and say yes to the prompt to record and these show up with a yellow stripe (with a configurable recording overlap time) as pending, just record only the things you want to watch later (in their native format eg h.264/aac in a .TS container) saving disk space and other PC resources ...

Yeah. You mentions before the heritage of the 2 programs. I'm not sure either, but they both have the same feel and look, which is a plus when you have old people interacting with it.

[hydra3333]

old people ... he he, that's us.
I'm not sure if it uses the 1 tuner for 2 or more concurrent programme recordings from various streams in the one channel's mux.
I wouldn't necessarily assume it doesn't given the apparent software heritage.
You could ask the author over in https://sourceforge.net/p/tvschedulerpro/discussion/users/ and hope for the best ... if it does then you'd be using supported software again

edit: https://sourceforge.net/p/tvschedulerpro/discussion/users/thread/6116074e54/

[hydra3333]

OK an answer from the developer:

https://sourceforge.net/p/tvschedulerpro/discussion/users/thread/6116074e54/#6c8d

John Calvi. - 3 hours ago
TVSP has producers and consumers. When a capture is started a producer locks to the channel and hands data (memory share) to a consumer that will write the data to a file. The data written depends on whether its a partial or full mux. A partial is a single sub-channel and a full mux is all the sub-channels on that frequency. You can choose to record all of a frequency in one file or multiple separate files, or just one sub-channel.
For example in Australia ABC TV is a sub channel and ABC HD, ABC Kids, ABC Me etc. are all sub channels of the ABC frequency.
If another sub-channel is scheduled to be recorded and it is on the same parent channel then another consumer is started and gets its data from the same producer.
Long story short only a single capture card is required to support multiple captures if they are on the same frequency and multiple files can be created, no need to save a full ts-mux.
Feel free to pass this along to the other forum.

[Dencorub]

OK an answer from the developer:

John Calvi. - 3 hours ago
Long story short only a single capture card is required to support multiple captures if they are on the same frequency and multiple files can be created, no need to save a full ts-mux.

Thanks for this. Sounds just like the way DV Scheduler works.

I wonder how hard it is to import my settings, especially all my auto-add shows.

Will have a look and see how we go.

[hydra3333]

Will have a look and see how we go.

Had a chance to look at it yet ? Interested to see how you went.

[Dencorub]

Had a chance to look at it yet ? Interested to see how you went.

Hopefully I'll find some time this weekend.

[Dencorub]

Spent some time today ...

First, let me say that the following issues may well be settings and misunderstandings, so I'm prepared to try things out.

Right from the start, I was a bit baffled as to why I couldn't just use the standard Java x64 runtime. Installed the option provided, uninstalled other Java, and TV Scheduler Pro installed. I had standard Java x64 and x86 (required for DV Scheduler). Had to uninstall the x64 version, and did the x86 version as well. Then realised I needed the x86 version. Will be a bit of a pain not being able to run both.

Tried loading a settings backup from DV Scheduler, and it loaded TV channels, but nothing else. Disappointing, but not unexpected. This, of course, means manually adding all the auto-add recordings manually. What a pain in the butt ...

Went to add my tuners. Was presented with the 6 tuners in my system. Great. Added the first 5. All the same name. Can't seem to find a way to rename them, and using the hardware ID's is not really a nice option.Being able to rename these would be great.

Went to reload my xmltv data, for which I use EPGScan to pull from the TV signal, and it just errors out, and loads nothing. Happy to ditch it for a more modern program that can do this, but I would have thought xmltv files ought to be standard.

At this point I decided to just go back to DV Scheduler for the time being. Re-installed Java, and it's all running.

Not sure if the version of Java the TV Scheduler Pro wants is compatible with java x86. Will see next time I sit and have a play.